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I think this survey is flawed in the assumption any law student could learn all of these languages to the same level of comprehension in the same period of time. Learning spanish to a conversational level over a summer is hard, but possible. Learning japanese to even a basic level over a year would be nearly unheard of.

I'd say definitely Chinese, but I don't think you'll be able to reach the level of proficiency many native or nearly native Chinese speakers/law students already have in time to make an impact on your near-term hiring. Plus, I'm not sure how open China really is to non-native workers and whether you could land a job there (or in the US with the assumption that you'll conduct business in Chinese) speaking the language on a beginning level.

I wouldn't choose a language based on any perceived legal hiring boost, just pick one based on your interests in the culture, country or whatever -- so in this regard I think Chinese would be a good if not the easiest choice.

The importance of Chinese is overrated. I say doing something unusual would actually give you a boost. Like Arabic or maybe Korean. You never know which region will become more important in 20-30 years.

Plus, like drdolittle said up there, there are already plenty (And I mean MORE THAN ENOUGH) of Chinese Americans or English speaking Chinese that no non-native can catch up on fluency.

Last edited by roranoa on Mon Dec 12, 2011 7:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

if its just limited to domestic law..i think spanish or something might be more important than chinese....and arabic is not at all important for law firm work imho unless u wanna go work for the US govt

Fluent Spanish-speaker here... did not help with OCI. It does help if you want to do criminal defense, immigration, or family law. It is also helpful for getting PI jobs. But if you are going for big law, unless you are Hispanic, I don't think Spanish helps that much. No one cares about my flawless Castellano.

knowing chinese will not offer you a big boost comparable to law review membership or adding 0.2 to your GPA.I think biglaw firms have translators.

However, it guarantees that some nice firms would take a second look at your resume. a partner of a firm (where I am going to start) told me that they had thick chinese documents involving a company in China. It had never occurred to me that this firm has some sort of international practice.

Last edited by amyamy on Mon Dec 12, 2011 8:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

True answer here is Japanese in terms of Biglaw employment. The big caveat here is that you need fairly high ability level. Due to a congruence of factors (lack of Japanese students/ smaller immigrant population/ Big firm presence in Japan/ etc.) truly fluent Japanese speaking T10 grads can basically find employment (and oftentimes 1L SA positions) regardless of grades.

Of course learning Japanese isn't that easy. Chinese is fairly useful, but the increasing focus on hiring native lawyers in China lowers the boost for that language.

amyamy wrote:what do you plan to do when you have taken, say, Chinese 101 or elementary Chinese?are you going to put this on your resume?

I guess it works - for hiring partners who do not know the language.

Right -- which is why you have to be very careful how you represent this to employers. I know someone who had "conversational proficiency in X language" on their resume because they took it for a year in college. An associate tried to have a conversation with them in X language during a callback. Epic fail.

but knowledge of Chinese is moderately useful for biglaw jobs, and useful for mid- or even small firms that engage in the right kind of practices. I can't think of any mid/small law firms that have japanese practices.

adonai wrote:According to S&C, it is French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. I think Korean is in demand based on other articles I've seen elsewhere. Surprisingly, Chinese and Arabic aren't as much in demand. At least to this firm.

amyamy wrote:I think knowledge of Japanese is very useful for biglaw jobs.

but knowledge of Chinese is moderately useful for biglaw jobs, and useful for mid- or even small firms that engage in the right kind of practices. I can't think of any mid/small law firms that have japanese practices.

There aren't very mid/ small firms in US transactional law in China right now. Basically the main deals (Capital Markets and M&A) are handled by large Biglaw firms with multiple offices worldwide. Also, increasing focus by the Chinese in selecting domestic firms to handle more routine transactions is only going to increase this concentration of work within several major firms.